(The Daily Star)- Iraqi paramilitaries launched an operation Saturday to retake the town of Tal Afar from ISIS and cut extremist supply lines from Mosul to Syria, a spokesman said. Forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi, a paramilitary umbrella organisation dominated by Iran-backed Shiite...

(The Daily Star)-  A Palestinian attacked Israeli troops with his car and then with a knife in the occupied West Bank before being shot and seriously wounded, the army said Saturday. The attack happened late Friday near the Jewish settlement of Ofra, northeast of the city of Ramallah,...

 The United States accused the Syrian government Friday of using "starvation as a weapon of war" -- a war crime under the Geneva Conventions -- stepping up the rhetoric against Bashar Assad and his Russian backers. Rejecting the Kremlin claims that attacks on Aleppo have stopped, a U.S....

Iraqi Shi'ite militias backed by Iran said on Friday they would soon join the fight against Islamic State on a new front west of Mosul, a move which could block any retreat by the jihadists into Syria but might alarm Turkey and the United States. The Shi'ite militias, with thousands of...